Subject: Re: newline and concatenate. length of a lisp function.
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 21:51:37 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3205086696355384@naggum.net>
* "Coby Beck" <cbeck@mercury.bc.ca>
> While admittedly I don't quite know *everything* (but plan to by 2002)....
>
> I can not for the life of me imagine _any_ good reason to have one function
> of such length! Or any class of problem that would require that....
Come back when you have tried to figure out how best to parse SGML and
XML. Since you have not been very kind to me, let me assure that you
_need_ to know thees things and should not consider the pain you suffer
to be a good indication to stop. So go be good at XML! :)
Essentially, state machines are best implemented in huge tagbody's.
Trying to break them up into little "modular" pieces causes much more
code and much less efficiency. Also, each state, labeled by a tag, _is_
a little module, but the way it has been expressed is different from the
function-level modularization that is hailed as universally better by
people who lack experience from real life.
#:Erik
--
There is nothing in this message that under normal circumstances should
cause Barry Margolin to announce his moral superiority over others, but
one never knows how he needs to behave to maintain his belief in it.